Layoffs Coming to Symantec Next Week

Symantec is preparing to cut 180 people from its Mountain View headquarters and Culver City, Calif., office. The layoffs are part of a restructuring plan announced earlier this year under new CEO Steve Bennett, and represent only a fraction of the reported 1,700 cuts the security software giant is planning to make.

Back in January, Symantec announced a restructuring that called for simplifying its organizational structure – that’s code for eliminating layers of middle managers and executives – and removing redundant personal.

In late June, the company had incurred a total charge of $74 million, largely related to severance and related employee benefits, Symantec reported in an SEC filing. However, it still has a long way to go — and many more layoffs to make – if it’s to reach its goals by the end of its fourth fiscal quarter, which ends next March.

Here is the breakout of Symantec layoffs during calendar 2013, so far:

The Culver City office is one of the company’s 18 U.S. training locations. It’s not immediately clear if the other training facilities will be hit. An email to Symantec’s corporate communications liaison wasn’t returned.

As of March 2013, Symantec had 21,500 employees worldwide, 44 percent of them in the U.S. Roughly a third of them where in sales and marketing, with another third in R&D. The rest were spread between support, services, manufacturing, administration and management.

Despite the layoffs, the company expects to continue investing in R&D.